Inspirational Music Quotes

For some time now, we have been collecting inspirational quotes on music and writing them into a note book. Music plays such a valuable role in this world and we have found it beneficial to ponder this from time to time. We hope that these meaningful words inspire the musician and music-lover in our readers as much as they have inspired us.

“Sound is the force of creation, the true whole. Music then, becomes the voice of the great cosmic oneness and therefore the optimal way to reach this final state of healing.” – Hazrat Inayat Khan.

“For me, music and sound are both the language and underlying architecture of the cosmos.” – Tom Kenyon.

“If a musician wants to become a finer artist, he must first become a finer person.”
– Shinichi Suzuki.

“I was obliged to work hard. Whoever is equally industrious will succeed just as well.”
– Johann Sebastian Bach.

“Music expresses that which cannot be put into words and that which cannot remain silent.”
– Victor Hugo.

“The man that hath no music in himself, nor is not mov’d with concord of sweet sounds, is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils. The motions of his spirit are dull as night, and his affections dark as Erebus. Let no such man be trusted.”
– William Shakespeare.

“Music is the mediator between the spiritual and the sensual life. Although the spirit be not master of that which it creates through music, yet it is blessed in this creation, which, like every creation of art, is mightier than the artist.”
– Ludwig van Beethoven.

“Music; the greatest good that mortals know, and all of heaven we have below.”
– Joseph Addison.

“Music is well said to be the speech of angels; in fact, nothing among the utterances allowed to man is felt to be so divine. It brings us near to the Infinite.”
– Thomas Carlyle.

“Our music, whose eternal being is forever bound up in its temporal sounds, is not merely an art, enriching beyond measure our cultural life, but also a message from higher worlds, raising and urging us on by it’s reminders of our own eternal origins.”
– Bruno Walter.

“We are living in a world where the individual must learn to command the raw materials of expression. He must not be dependent all the time on the ready-made, the finished product. It’s the transferring, the changing of the raw into what is the expression of your own self – the whole joy and satisfaction and frustration of life is built into this.”
– Yehudi Menuhin.

“Music possesses much richer means of expression and it is a more subtle medium for translating the 1000 shifting moments of the feelings of the soul.”
– Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky.

“Healing happens between the notes. I had to allow the space and not be afraid, and to know that things happen in space. You have to let the space settle. If you let go, you transcend and experience the stillness, and that is the healing. One ingredient of health is rest. Activity comes from inactivity. The basis of sound is silence. Stillness is basic to health.”
– Paul Horn.

“Great music is that which penetrates the ear with facility and leaves the memory with difficulty. Magical music never leaves the memory.”
– Sir Thomas Beecham.

“Without music, life would be an error. The German imagines even God singing songs.”
– Friedrich Nietzsche.

“There’s music in the sighing of a reed; there’s music in the gushing of a rill; there’s music in all things, if men had ears: their earth is but an echo of the spheres.”
– Lord Byron.

“Music nourishes our life with soothing outer sounds; meditation nourishes our life with calming inner silence. Both help us to be happier.”
– Jogyata Dallas.

“Music is the purest form of art, and therefore the most direct expression of beauty, with a form and spirit which is one and simple, and least encumbered with anything extraneous. We seem to feel that the manifestation of the infinite in the finite forms of creation is music itself, silent and visible.”
– Rabindranath Tagore.

“Music is an agreeable harmony for the honour of God and the permissible delights of the soul.”
– Johann Sebastian Bach.

“Music is the fourth great material want of our nature – first food, then raiment, then shelter, then music.”
Christian Bovee.

“There is always music amongst the trees in the garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it.”
– Minnie Aumonier.

“Music is the harmonious sound of creation – an echo of the invisible world.”
– Giuseppe Mazzini.

“The life of the arts, far from being an interruption, a distraction in the life of a nation, is close to the center of a nation’s purpose – and is a test of the quality of a nation’s civilization.”
– John F. Kennedy.

“From the root, the sap rises up into the artist, flows through him, flows to his eye. Overwhelmed and activated by the force of the current, he conveys his vision into his work. And yet, standing at his appointed place as the trunk of the tree, he does nothing other than gather and pass on what rises from the depths. He neither serves nor commands he transmits. His position is humble. And the beauty at the crown is not his own; it has merely passed through him.”
– Paul Klee.

“One fear I would always have, even in my class situation, is that the emphasis is on technicality – whereas for me, the whole thing is the feeling and heart and soul. That’s what the older musicians had.”
– Mary Bergin.

“The soul of music slumbers in the shell till waked and kindled by the master’s spell; and feeling hearts, touch them but rightly, pour a thousand melodies unheard before!”
– Samuel Rogers.

“I can only think of music as something inherent in every human being – a birthright. Music coordinates mind, body and spirit.”
– Menuhin Yehudi.

“Music is the language of the spirit. It opens the secret of life – bringing peace and abolishing strife.”
– Kahlil Gibran.

“Music – the one incorporeal entrance into the higher world of knowledge which comprehends mankind, but which mankind cannot comprehend.”
– Ludwig van Beethoven.

“I see in the melody of Nature, God. It is a wonderful work of art. The spirit of the art is wonderful. And I feel that I am myself because I have never taken music lightly. Music is the manifestation of God, like everything else.”
– Pablo Casals. (From comments made during a meeting between Sri Chinmoy and Pablo Casals in Puerto Rico on October 6, 1972.)

“Music creates order out of chaos: for rhythm imposes unanimity upon the divergent, melody imposes continuity upon the disjointed, and harmony imposes compatibility upon the incongruous.”
– Yehudi Menuhin.

“Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and life to everything.”
– Plato.

“Music may achieve the highest of all missions: she may be a bond between nations, races and states, who are strangers to one another in many ways; she may unite what is disunited, and bring peace to what is hostile.”
– Dr. Max Bendiner.

“Chosen are those artists who penetrate to the region of that secret place where primeval power nurtures all evolution. There, where the powerhouse of all time and space call it brain or heart of creation activates every function, who is the artist who would not dwell there?”
– Paul Klee.

“It occurred to me by intuition, and music was the driving force behind that intuition. My discovery was the result of musical perception.”
– Albert Einstein – upon being asked his theory of relativity.

“Music speaks what cannot be expressed, soothes the mind and gives it rest, heals the heart and makes it whole, flows from heaven to the soul.”
– Author Unknown.

“Music cleanses the understanding; inspires it, and lifts it into a realm which it would not reach if it were left to itself.”
– Henry Ward Beecher.

“The key to the mystery of a great artist is that for reasons unknown, he will give away his energies and his life just to make sure that one note follows another… and leaves us with the feeling that something is right in the world.”
– Leonard Bernstein.

“Music is so naturally united with us that we cannot be free from it – even if we so desired.”
– Boethius.

“My heart is full of many things… there are moments when I feel that speech is nothing after all.”
– Ludwig van Beethoven.

“To the birds you gave songs, the birds gave you songs in return. You gave me only a voice, yet asked for more, thus I sing.”
– Radindranath Tagore.

“My idea is that there is music in the air, music all around us; the world is full of it, and you simply take as much as you require.”
– Edward Elgar.

“Any child who is properly trained can develop musical ability, just as all children develop the ability to speak their mother tongue. The potential of every child is unlimited.”
– Shinichi Suzuki.

“The only business of the head in the world is to bow a ceaseless obeisance to the heart.”
– William Butler Yeats.

“The function of music is to release us from the tyranny of conscious thought.”
– Sir Thomas Beecham.

“It’s the heart and that’s so important in the music. There’s a tendency for people to think that they have to be the best technicians and the best at learning all the tunes, but actually it’s to do with who you are and not what you play.”
– Bob Bickerton.

“There should be music in the child’s environment, just as there does exist in the child’s environment spoken speech. In the social environment the child should be considered and music should be provided.”
– Maria Montessori.

“The more one studies the harmony of music, and then studies human nature, how people agree and how they disagree, how there is attraction and repulsion, the more one will see that it is all music.”
– Inayat Khan.

“The function of music is to release us from the tyranny of conscious thought.”
– Sir Thomas Beecham.

“The dignity of the artist lies in their duty of keeping awake the sense of wonder in the world.”
– G.K. Chesterton.

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